Morehouse College, one of the most distinguished historically black colleges — with graduates like Dr. Martin Luther King, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, film director Spike Lee and others — literally shut down for spring break this week. As its 2,000 students took their break, every member of the faculty and staff was furloughed without pay as the college struggles to balance its books.

The crisis at Morehouse, which will hit other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) even harder, results from the combination of foul economic times and continued cuts in support for students and colleges at the federal and state level.

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Bob Fitrakis has long been involved in voting rights litigation. Fitrakis was an Election Protection attorney on November 2, 2004 in Franklin County. Fitrakis rose to national prominence during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004 and called the first public hearings on election irregularities in Ohio. He filed a challenge in the Ohio Supreme Court to Ohio's presidential election results in the cases Moss v. Bush and Moss v. Moyer with three other attorneys. He testified on election irregularities before the Congressional Black Caucus and Progressive Caucus. Fitrakis served as co-counsel in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville civil rights case.

Connie Gadell-Newton started working with Bob Fitrakis at the Free Press in 2008, when she requested the records of purged voters from the 88 County Boards of Elections. Connie and Bob also sued to get Cynthia McKinney, Green Party Presidential Candidate, on the ballot in 2008, and appointed Election Observers through the Green Party to protect the vote. These activities were supported by funding that was donated through the Ohio Litigation Fund.

The following is a brief summary of a much longer, and fully documented, report available at War is a Crime and being made available in an attractive 88-page PDF at Coldtype.
At 10 years since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation (to use the original name with the appropriate acronym, OIL) and over 22 years since Operation Desert Storm, there is little evidence that any significant number of people in the United States have a realistic idea of what our government has done to the people of Iraq, or of how these actions compare to other horrors of world history. A majority of Americans believe the war since 2003 has hurt the United States but benefitted Iraq. A plurality of Americans believe, not only that Iraqis should be grateful, but that Iraqis are in fact grateful.

As I rushed through a cold drizzle to get to the Union Sportsman’s Alliance (USA) dinner in Columbus, I was stopped by a huge line snaking around the building outside. Assuming it was the ticket line, I waited, got wet, only to find out that the line was not the ticket line at all, but was a line to get pictures taken with Daniel Lee Martin and Julie McQueen, hosts and stars of the award winning union sportsmen/women TV show ‘Brotherhood Outdoors.

The Pipefitter’s Union Hall was packed, over 500 folks filing in for what was the eighth in a series of Union Sportsmen’s Alliance public events. The USA now has over 6 million members, making it “larger than the NRA and next two largest sportsmen’s organizations combined,” according to USA National Director Fred Myers. Local media were present, along with a contingent from ‘Field & Stream’ magazine. The Ohio AFL-CIO had just voted to become a sponsor of USA, www.unionsportsmen.org at its recent state convention.

Dave Caldwell, President of the local AFL-CIO labor federation said that the endorsement is couldn’t have come soon enough for him.